CERLAC Review - Fellows

Alan Simmons in Profile

By Caitlyn Vernon

Alan Simmons was the Director of CERLAC from 1985-89 and was Acting Director from 1999-2000. As the Director of CERLAC Alan oversaw the Centre at a transformative moment. CERLAC enlarged its physical presence on campus and underwent institutional growth with the development of a series of new projects and the addition of a focus on migration studies. CERLAC Fellow Liisa North, commented that Alan “played a critical leadership role in the consolidation of the institution.”

On June 30, 2004 Alan completed a three-year term as Chair of the Department of Sociology at York University. He is about to begin a well-deserved sabbatical leave (starting January 2005) in which he will concentrate on finishing important ongoing research studies, starting a new collaborative research program, and making his research and teaching materials more available to students and the public at large.

Growing up in coastal British Columbia Alan was surrounded by Spanish place names, the legacy of Spanish explorers. Learning the history of these names signaled the beginnings of his interest in Latin America. He completed his undergraduate degree and an MA in Sociology at the University of British Columbia before doing a PhD in Sociology at Cornell University. Completed in 1970, his PhD thesis was entitled “The Emergence of Planning Orientations in a Modernizing Community.” It was at Cornell that he became interested in population issues and migration, through research on rural to urban migration in Colombia. This interest then expanded to international migration in the Americas and globally.

Alan has researched, published and taught extensively on the subject of migration, which he describes as “an area of privileged entry into the critical examination of social inequality and the study of power in social process.” In his work, Alan strives for a balance between understanding the theoretical and doing the practical work with communities. Recognizing that the geopolitical processes and inequalities that drive migration are global in scope, Alan has an interest in Asia and West Africa but has focused his research on Latin America and the Caribbean. See his selected recent publications.

Alan is currently focusing on completing two projects in Toronto, one with Salvadorian and Guatemalan communities in Toronto on their migration and settlement experiences, and the other on Latin American youth experiences and identities. Using the methodologies of participatory research, the goal of these projects is to develop new insights on racism and settlement within a transnational framework, to assist the communities in developing their own self-awareness and to break down negative stereotypes that the communities face. Although widely described as problematic communities, Alan notes that within the context and challenges related to leaving war-torn countries and settling here in a time of high unemployment, the refugee-origin Central American and other Latin American communities in Canada are actually doing quite well and can be portrayed in a more positive light.

When asked about current activities, Alan mentioned that he has recently joined the Board of Directors of Action Canada for Population and Development. He is also beginning to pursue a program of research with others on remittances (money sent by immigrant and migrant workers to their home countries). Although still in the formative idea phase, the goal is to develop a program oriented towards three policy areas: lowering the costs of sending remittances, increasing the security of the funds sent to family members abroad, and investigating policy or institutional development that would increase the positive impact that remittances have for recipients. The program will begin with a joint project with Dwaine Plaza (Oregon State University) and Victor Piché (University of Montreal) on remittances from Canada to Jamaica and Haiti. It is hoped that this initial study will be followed by other projects involving other CERLAC researchers on Central America, Chile, Colombia and Mexico.

Alan sees migration as an outcome of systemic process that cannot be separated from the origin and formation of nation states and control of borders. Migration stems from competition between nation states in the protection of national interests and is connected to the movement of capital and labour in a globalized world. Migration, he says, occurs “in response to both economic and social-cultural forces.” Putting constraints and controls on migration tends to disadvantage people who are already disadvantaged. Inequalities emerge when people are not allowed the opportunity to move to find better conditions. “Ideologically,” Alan says, “I’m in favour of open borders. That’s the world I’d like to see.”

Alan gives credit to Joseph Stycos, supervisor of his doctoral research, for teaching him how to do research that is grounded in a combination of in-depth interviews and field observations, with contexualizing census and survey data. The objective is to listen to what participants say, rather than imposing assumptions. In turn, Alan receives high praise from his former students. Alan supervised Dwaine Plaza’s doctoral research and since that time they have collaborated on a number of projects. Commenting that Alan’s style of teaching is that of facilitation, Dwaine says, “Alan is very dedicated to his students. His door is always open for them and he strives to get them to a higher level. By doing that he models for them what a professor should be like.” Dwaine describes Alan as “a caring person who likes to see others be successful”, as someone who “sets a very high standard which most of us can only aspire to achieve”, and who is “one of the only professors I know who has found the balance between family, work and students.”

Currently Alan is continuing along a path of personal and institutional growth and change through the research described above and through the development of mixed-mode teaching materials. Developed and implemented in collaboration with others, mixed-mode teaching aims to encourage the acquisition of stronger analytical and problem solving skills. Materials he developed over the past two years to support study and research on global migration may be found at Empirical.

Patrick Solomon in Profile

By Sharifa Wright

Patrick Solomon’s career in education reflects a rich, deep, and multi-faceted approach to the field. Presently a CERLAC Fellow and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at York University, Patrick began his career as a secondary school teacher in Jamaica before migrating to Canada in 1969, where he worked as a teacher and administrator in the Ontario school system. Patrick completed a BA in Psychology at the University of Waterloo and his Masters in Education at the University of Western Ontario. He received his PhD in Social Foundations of Education from State University of New York, Buffalo.

Patrick’s research, teaching and community involvement has enabled him to impact the field of education not only in Canada but also in the Caribbean through his involvement with the University of the West Indies (UWI) and the Mico Teachers College in Jamaica (the institution from which he received his first teaching certificate in 1967). Within the Canadian education system, his research has focused on the community of students and teachers of Caribbean background and the multicultural dynamic that immigration trends have created. His studies of Caribbean culture have produced an impressive body of work on social justice issues, race, class, diversity, equity and pedagogy that has spilt over into the classrooms in both regions.

A colleague, CERLAC Fellow Harry Smaller, describes Patrick as a “source of inspiration and good advice,” saying that the wealth of “community experience on issues of social justice, social difference, and anti-racist activities” that Patrick brings to his work has made an important contribution to York University and to the Faculty of Education in particular.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the York University-University of the West Indies (UWI) Collaborative Academic Agreement, which enables students from both institutions to participate in academic exchange at the undergraduate and graduate levels. It is also a platform for joint research activities, joint teaching and supervision of students, and the staging of joint seminars, conferences and academic meetings. Patrick was involved in the initiation of this program and he continues to be one of the primary York officials involved. He is dedicating his current sabbatical to analyzing the growth of the program, visiting UWI and interviewing past and current students on exchange. As ambassadors of their respective institutions and cultures, Patrick considers these students to be crucial to the project of internationalizing the teaching and research capabilities of York. Patrick Taylor, who has worked with Dr. Solomon since the inception of the UWI program describes Patrick as “…a pleasure to work with. He has dedicated a lot of time and effort into ensuring that the UWI exchange programme runs smoothly and serves to enhance the academic experience of both UWI and York students.”

In 1994 Patrick was busy developing the Urban Diversity Teacher Education Programme. This initiative, which was started with seed money from the Ministry of Education and received continued support from York University, is aimed at increasing diversity in the teaching staff and curriculum in Ontario. In the 10 years of the programme approximately 600 students from various backgrounds have graduated. Patrick recently received a three year SSHRC grant to pursue a study of this project. He will be working with graduates of the Urban Diversity programme who have been utilizing the skills they developed to tackle the standardizing impact of educational reform policy in Ontario.

Patrick reflects on his thirty-seven years of experience in the field of education with the comment, “we all learn from each other.” His extensive research and publications on social difference and schooling include his popular 1992 book: "Black resistance in high school: Forging a separatist culture." Patrick fondly credits people with whom he has worked, in particular Lois Weis (SUNY, Buffalo) and Stan Shapson (York’s VP of Research and Innovation), for influencing his career. He also cites bell hooks and Stuart Hall as some of his philosophical heroes. In 2000 he was awarded the Mico Teachers College award for service of distinction regionally, nationally and internationally and he is also the first recipient of the Exemplary Multicultural Educator's Award, presented by the Canada Council for Multicultural / Intercultural Education.

Profile of Carlota McAllister

Rural hearts, minds and souls in Central America

By Caitlyn Vernon

Carlota McAllister is Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department of York University. From 2002-2004 she was a Postdoctoral Fellow with CERLAC, and is in the process of becoming a Fellow. Carlota is currently investigating the emergence of Central American insurgencies in the context of Third World internationalism. More specifically she is looking into the formation of the revolutionary left in Central America, and how guerrillas there drew on transnational notions of “justice,” “progress,” and “development” to advance Third Worldist claims to understand the “rural area” and represent its future against agrarian elites’ claims to own the nation and represent its traditions. The work done during the Cold War to form and direct rural hearts, minds, and souls in places like Central America, she believes, helped establish the conditions for the current configuration of global power.

Carlota’s commitment to Central America began at a young age. She grew up in Toronto with her Guatemalan mother, and the family made frequent trips to visit the Central American country. Traveling around Latin America after completing her undergraduate degree, she was inspired to pursue studies in anthropology by a Chilean exile, (a former member of Salvador Allende’s government, a sociologist and intellectual), who encouraged her to confront the world through her work. With this motivation, she completed an M.A. in Anthropology at the University of Arizona in 1994, where she also volunteered with a legal aid clinic dedicated to helping Central American refugees gain asylum.

Fieldwork in Guatemala, including a stint working on exhumations of mass graves with the Guatemalan Foundation for Forensic Anthropology, led her to the community of Chupol, where she conducted her research for her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Johns Hopkins University. Her dissertation, entitled: “Good People: Revolution, Community and Conciencia in a Maya-Kíche’ Village in Guatemala” was completed in 2003. Thinking of her research politically, in order to influence politics through research, continues to motivate her work. She is “a person of tremendous intelligence and energy,” who “works in an extremely systematic and dedicated fashion,” says CERLAC Fellow and professor Liisa North, who supervised Carlota’s postdoctoral research. This dedication can be seen in her creativity and stamina in pursuing challenging new kinds of research.

She is currently working on revising her dissertation into a book manuscript, The Good Road: Conscience and Consciousness in a Post-Revolutionary Maya Village, to be published by Duke University Press. In the book she will describe how the village of Chupol, located in Chichicastenango, Guatemala, became an important part of the social base of the guerilla group Ejército Guerillero de los Pobres, and how the community now deals with this legacy of political organization as well as with the genocidal counterinsurgency campaign the Guatemalan army used to quell it. She will examine the process of becoming a rural revolutionary and ask what happens once people have had their political consciousness raised but failed to achieve the results they sought. The community now debates whether or not they should continue to challenge the state (and be left out of current state projects and funding as well as risk another catastrophe) or if they should reject their heritage of resistance, making it difficult to know how to operate as a collective. Carlota describes how this debate leaves the community conflicted.

Other forthcoming publications include an edited volume tentatively entitled Revisiting Guatemala’s Harvest of Violence: Studying War in a Postwar Society, and an article entitled, “Rural Markets, Revolutionary Souls, and Rebellious Women in Cold War Guatemala.”

Carlota’s research interests include agency, revolution, human rights, gender, the Cold War, Catholicism, violence, post-war societies, forensic anthropology and indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. Her geographical region of specialization encompasses Central America, Mexico and Cuba. She has presented numerous papers on these topics, and has worked as coordinator and commentator for a number of conferences and meetings focusing specifically on Guatemala. Liisa North describes Carlota as someone with clarity and focus who does excellent work and knows how to present it. “I’m sure she’s going to be an excellent teacher,” says Liisa.

Carlota returned to Canada in early 2004 after living in Latin America for the past 7 years, where she was conducting her doctoral research, writing her dissertation and conducting postdoctoral research. Recent exciting news includes the birth of her son Felix, born July 18, 2004 – congratulations Carlota! Currently on maternity leave, Carlota is preparing for her return to York where she will be teaching transnational religion and anthropology as well as continuing her post-doctoral research.

CERLAC Fellow Deborah Barndt launches The Viva! Project

In December 2002, Deborah Barndt was invited to launch three books at the Guadalajara International Book Fair. All three publications involved collaboration with Mexican academic and NGO partners in research over the past decade: Women Working the NAFTA Food Chain (an anthology), Just Doing It: Collective Action in the Americas (co-edited with Gene Desfor and Barbara Rahder), and Tangled Routes: Women, Work, and Globalization on the Tomato Trail (2002, Garmond).

Deborah then traveled to Nicaragua for a final visit to the IDRC-supported CAMP-Lab Project in Pearl Lagoon, and then on to Panama, where she met with staff at CEASPA, the Panamanian Centre for Social Education and Action. During this Central American visit, she invited popular educators and community artists from Panama (CEASPA), Nicaragua (URACCAN and CAMP-Lab), and Mexico (UAM and IMDEC) for two weeks of activities in Toronto in April-May 2003. The Central American guests spoke at the Community Arts Ontario annual conference at Harbourfront and facilitated hands-on theatre, radio, video, mural-production in a three-day workshop at York entitled "Making Art, Making Change." During this visit, they developed a proposal for collaborative research, which Deborah submitted to SSHRC in 2003. The VIVA! project, "Creative Tensions in Community Arts and Popular Education in Social Movements: A Transnational Study of the Americas" received funding in April 2004 for a three-year participatory action research project.

RELAC: Red de Estudios sobre Latinoamericanos en Canadá

(Research Network on Latin Americans in Canada)

In November 2002, a group of professors and students from York, Toronto and Ryerson Universities organized a meeting with members of the Latin American community to identify shared research concerns among academics and the community. RELAC was formed as a result of this meeting. Those present agreed on the importance of creating a widely accessible way of collecting and making available published and unpublished work on Latin Americans in Canada. Dr. Patricia Landolt (CERLAC Fellow, University of Toronto) and Martha Barriga (then a graduate student at OISE) took the lead in implementing the virtual library project, with support from Luin Goldring (a CERLAC Fellow at York) and Daniel Schugurensky (OISE). The project received financial support from the University of Toronto at Scarborough and CERIS.

RELAC’s library contains references on a variety of topics such as education, policy, settlement, health, women’s issues, transnationalism, identity, and immigrant participation. A key feature of the library is that it includes references to academic work as well as community organization reports and other fugitive literature on Latin Americans in Canada. The website also includes information about ongoing projects. Online documents are available in some cases.

Anyone with an article, thesis, report, or other relevant material on Latin Americans in Canada is invited to submit it to the library by emailing the reference and, if possible, the file.

Visit the RELAC website.

BRAZIL Sister Watersheds / Bacias Irmãs project

2003-2008

The Sister Watersheds / Bacias Irmãs project, now in its second year of six, links students and researchers from York University, the University of São Paulo, and the Ecoar Institute for Citizenship (an environmental organization in São Paulo, Brazil). The project's goal is capacity-building for improved civil society participation in watershed management. Initial project activities have included baseline research on the institutional structures for watershed management in São Paulo State, Brazil and Ontario, Canada; the challenges of facilitating public participation; and the needs of civil society organizations and representatives working in this area. Several York University graduate students have gone to Brazil to conduct research, and Brazilian graduate students will begin coming to York in 2005. Future project activities will include the development of innovative forms of popular environmental education, materials, curricula and workshop techniques, building on the expertise of the Ecoar Institute and York and USP researchers.

Ellie Perkins, Project Director and CERLAC Fellow
Andrea Moraes, Project Coordinator

For more information, see the project website.

FELLOW NEWS

Deborah Barndt continues to lecture on issues of women workers and global food systems. She has been guest lecture at University of Arkansas, George Perimeter College, Northern Illinois University, Trent University, University of Toronto, King’s College- University of Western Ontario, and the University of Windsor. She is also working on a three year SSHRC project, “Creative Tensions of Community Arts in Popular Education: A Transnational Study of the Americas,” involving research collaborators from Panama, Nicaragua, Mexico, and the USA. See project update.

Tanya Basok is now Full Professor and has been appointed the Director of the Centre for Studies in Social Justice at the University of Windsor.

Judith Bernhard is now Full Professor of Early Childhood Education at Ryerson University. She continues to work on a collaborative research project on social cohesion in international migration with CERLAC Fellows Luin Goldring and Patricia Landolt. In 2002 she was invited as a member and advisor to the UNESCO Commission on Education. She received the 2002 Sarwan Sahota Distinguished Scholar Award at Ryerson University and in 2003 received an award from the Canada-US Fulbright Program. A collection of her articles was included in the Proyecto Adrianne at the Chile National Museum.

Cathy Blacklock is a co-investigator of the SSHRC Major Collaboration Research Initiative project “Globalization and Autonomy” directed by William Coleman, based at McMaster University. She is also an adjudicator for the IDRC research competition “Gender Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies (Guatemala and Colombia).”

Frederick I. Case continues his work as Co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Caribbean Religions. See the project update.

Michael Czerny produces a monthly bulletin about Jesuit work fighting HIV/AIDS throughout Africa. He has published Catholic Bishops of Africa and Madagascar Speak out on HIV & AIDS (2004), Rays of Hope: Managing HIV & AIDS in Africa (2004), and Inventory of the Catholic Church’s Response to HIV/AIDS in Kenya (2003), and worked on the video, "“If you want to…” Catholic Church’s Response to HIV/AIDS in Africa" (2003).

Andrea Davis continues as the Coordinator of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Programme (LACS) at York University. She has also been appointed to the board of the Centre for the Study of Black Cultures in Canada.

Harry Diaz is one of the co-directors of a five-year CIDA-UPCD development project on water supply for poor rural communities. He is also the Principal Investigator in a SSHRC-funded study looking at the ways that institutions can adapt to climate change. The project focuses on dry climates and uses Chile as a comparative example to forecast the impact of climate change in Canada’s prairie communities.

Mike Gismondi is an editor with the Electronic Journal of Sociology. Forthcoming publications include an article on Nicaragua’s mahogany forest and an edited volume entitled The Revenge of Nature: Reclaiming Sustainability in an Age of Globalization.

Mark Goodman is now the Coordinator of the Certificate in Anti-Racist Research and Practice School of Social Sciences, Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies, York University. Mark is also a co-investigator of “Diaspora, Islam and Gender: a Comparative Study of Four Displaced Communities from Islamic Cultures,” funded by SSHRC and the Ford Foundation. He is currently working on a comparative study of the cultural impact of slave trade and slavery in United States and Brazil entitled “Culture and Violence: African Enslavement, Family and Identity.”

Doris Grinspun received the Order of Ontario in 2003. See article.

Judy Hellman continued her work as Editor of CJLACS (see article). In addition to sitting on the advisory board of NACLA, and serving on the Editorial Boards of European Rev. of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Bulletin of Latin American Research, Historia y Grafia, Tabula Rasa, and Socialist Register, she joined the board of LARR in October 2004. In 2003, she received a Faculty of Arts Research Grant for her work on “International Migration and Political Mobilization in the Mexican Countryside.” She received a three-year SSHRC Standard Research Grant in 2004 to continue this work.

Sally Humphries is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology/Anthropology at the University of Guelph and she serves as the Graduate Coordinator for the Collaborative International Development Studies Program. She is involved in organizational activities associated with building a farmer research federation in Honduras, and recently completed a CIDA-funded project on “Seeds of Survival.”

Tanya Korovkin is working on an article addressing labour and environmental standards in the NTAE sector, with the focus on Ecuador. She continues her work on a SSHRC-sponsored project on the social implications of export expansion in Ecuador.

Patricia Landolt continues to work on the SSHRC funded project “Initiatives in the New Economy” (INE) with CERLAC Fellow Luin Goldring (see article).

Louis Lefeber is working on an essay on the concept of “efficiency” and is actively involved in CERLAC activities.

Paul Lovejoy is currently on sabbatical in Costa Rica working on ethnicity in Central America and the Caribbean. In 2003 he received a Faculty of Arts Research Award.

Lucy Luccisano is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Wilfred Laurier University. She is doing a comparative analysis of the impact of Mexico’s Anti-Poverty Program, Oportunidades, in three different communities in Mexico as well as researching women’s micro-credit programs in Toluca. She has written a chapter, “Programa Progresa/Oportunidades: ¿Seguridad Familiar a Costa de la Seguridad Comunitaria?” in the upcoming book La construcción de los desarrollos rurales ¿hacia la sustentabilidad? edited by Bruno Lutz.

Jorge Nef is now the Director of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Professor of Government and International Affairs at the University of South Florida. He was elected as a Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003 and in 2002 he received the Latin American Achievement Award for Best Educator.

Viviana Patroni continued as Director of CERLAC during the 2002/03 academic year and was on sabbatical during the 2003/04 year. See the report on RedLEIDH and the Director’s Message.

Linda Peake is now full professor in the Social Sciences Division and the School of Women Studies at York University. She is currently writing a number of articles on feminism and women’s health in the Caribbean. She is also writing a chapter for a tributary book to Prof. Paul Simpson-Housely. Forthcoming books include The Difference that differences make to Geography and Mapping Gender, Making Politics: feminist perspectives in political geography.

Ellie Perkins received a CIDA grant in 2003 for a 6 year project to improve civil society participation in watershed management in Brazil; the Sister Watersheds / Bacias Irmãs project. See project update.

Lynne Phillips is the head of the Sociology and Anthropology Department at the University of Windsor. She is co-investigator in a SSHRC-funded research project on “Agencies of Globalization: UNESCO, Social Transformations, and the Role of Expert Knowledge.” She is currently working on a chapter on “Food and Globalization” for Annual Review of Anthropology.

Cecilia Rocha recently received a CIDA–UPCD grant towards a project on “Building Capacity in Food Security in Brazil.” This follows a similar CIDA-UPCD grant she received in 2003 for the development of this project. In 2003 she was also granted funds from IDRC for a workshop on “Community Food Security” as well as working on a project for “Strengthening Partnerships in Brazil” funded by the Ryerson International Initiatives Fund.

Alejandro Rojas is co-investigator of a 5-year SSHRC Major International Collaborative Research Initiative titled “Institutional Adaptations to Climate Change: Comparative Study of Dryland River Basin in Canada and Chile.” The Principal Investigator for this project is CERLAC Fellow Harry Diaz.

Anneke Rummens is working on various individual and collaborative research projects concerning identity, youth, mental health, immigrants and refugees.

Frans Schryer has been appointed the Chair of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Guelph. Frans has recently begun a new research project in Mexico, looking at the process of group formation (ethnogenesis) involving Nahuas in the Alto Balsas region.

Alan Simmons recently completed a three-year term as Chair of the Department of Sociology at York University. He continues his research on migration and is developing techniques for mixed mode teaching. See his profile.

Patrick Solomon researches and teaches on issues of social justice, social difference, and anti-racist activities in education, with a focus on the Caribbean. See his profile.

Patrick Taylor received an extension of his Ford Foundation grant to continue as Principal Investigator of the Caribbean Religions Project. In 2003 he began serving on the Editorial Board of “Religion in the Americas,” Brill Academic Publishers. In 2003 Patrick was named the Director of the Graduate Programme in Interdisciplinary Studies, York University, and serves as well on the Executive Committee of the Humanities Division, the Joint Committee on Affirmative Action and the Admissions Committee of the Faculty of Graduate Studies.